The film is called "Blue Planet," but when it is finished, the colors likely to make the greatest impression on viewers are brown and gray--brown for the barren expanses of erosion visible to a camera 170 miles above Earth, gray for the layer of smoke that blankets the burning Amazon rain forest.

Fewer than 100 American cities have giant-screen theaters showing documentaries and family films. Last year, the city of Ontario--population 131,000--became home to two. One of the screens has been funded to the tune of $6.4 million-plus by San Bernardino County, in an effort to make the Ontario Mills mall a family entertainment center.

From the blackness of outer space, the camera tilts downward until the rim of the planet Earth comes into view. Then from 180 miles in space Baja California rises onto the screen. This would be opening sequence of a movie filmed by astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery, which was scheduled to land at Edwards Air Force Base this morning.

One week after 20th Century Fox made its much-watched entry into theatrical animation with "Anastasia," a new company is entering the field long dominated by Walt Disney Co. It's not Warner Bros. or DreamWorks SKG, though they have big animated pictures in the works. It's Imax Corp., the Ontario, Canada-based company that owns and programs 150 giant screens worldwide.

If the really big picture simply isn't big enough, hang onto your seats, because big-screen king Imax is bringing the West Coast's first 3-D sight-and-sound theater to Orange County. The six-story screen will open in late November at the Edwards Theatres complex in the Irvine Spectrum Entertainment Center, a $50-million, Moroccan-themed entertainment, restaurant and retail complex now under construction near the El Toro Y.

The Big Picture: The West Coast's first 3-D Imax theater will open Friday at the Irvine Entertainment Center near the El Toro Y, where the 5 and 405 freeways meet. Edwards Theaters Circuit Inc., the Newport Beach-based operator, is hoping the massive screen, with its high-tech sight-and-sound system, will find a place among Southern California's wealth of tourist attractions and generate annual ticket sales of $5 million.

Imax Announces Expansion Plans: Imax Corp. said it plans to open 40 large-format movie theaters that it will own and operate during the next five years. Toronto-based Imax now only leases its theaters, but it sees potential cost efficiencies in ownership, Chairman Bradley Wechsler said at the company's annual meeting. This strategy will complement the company's film production business, Wechsler said, as the new theaters will have an existing film library.

Early reports suggest that the high-tech, giant-screen, 3D motion picture screen at the Irvine Entertainment Center has been a success. Operated by Newport Beach-based Edwards Theatres Circuits Inc., the Imax theater that opened March 15 recorded the highest-ever opening weekend for an Imax theater. The three-day opening drew 12,632 patrons, generating $95,437 in gross ticket revenue. On average, 95% of available seats were filled in the 460-seat theater.

Not long after the invention of photography came stereographs--twin black-and-white images that, when seen through a special viewer, fused into one three-dimensional scene. It was a simple technique but an overwhelmingly popular one, and stereo viewers were common in middle-class American homes by the late 1800s. Things have come a long way since then, of course.

Not long after the invention of photography came stereographs--twin black-and-white images that, when seen through a special viewer, fused into one three-dimensional scene. It was a simple technique but an overwhelmingly popular one, and stereo viewers were common in middle-class American homes by the late 1800s. Things have come a long way since then, of course.

Early reports suggest that the high-tech, giant-screen, 3D motion picture screen at the Irvine Entertainment Center has been a success. Operated by Newport Beach-based Edwards Theatres Circuits Inc., the Imax theater that opened March 15 recorded the highest-ever opening weekend for an Imax theater. The three-day opening drew 12,632 patrons, generating $95,437 in gross ticket revenue. On average, 95% of available seats were filled in the 460-seat theater.

Edwards Theatres Circuit Inc. has signed an agreement to operate its second Imax 3D theater as part of a new, 24-screen complex being built in Ontario. Edwards has also entered into a nonbinding agreement with Toronto-based Imax to open up to five additional Imax 3D theaters over the next seven years. The Ontario theater is scheduled to open late this year or early next. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

The Big Picture: The West Coast's first 3-D Imax theater will open Friday at the Irvine Entertainment Center near the El Toro Y, where the 5 and 405 freeways meet. Edwards Theaters Circuit Inc., the Newport Beach-based operator, is hoping the massive screen, with its high-tech sight-and-sound system, will find a place among Southern California's wealth of tourist attractions and generate annual ticket sales of $5 million.

It had traveled the 2,500 miles from Toronto--very, very carefully--and was lowered into place through a hole specially cut in the theater roof. But an accident was not the main worry for those responsible for installing the first giant IMAX 3-D movie projector on the West Coast. The real threat is dust. "One speck of dust in there would look like a football on the screen," said Larry Porricelli, general manager of Edwards 21 Cinemas at the Irvine Entertainment Center.

Weren't the '90s supposed to be the stay-at-home decade, when we'd all gather around the big-screen TVs, videodisc players and other accouterments of our home entertainment centers? Movie theater builders are betting big that the "cocooning" trend is an illusion--or can be stopped in its tracks. Give 'em an entertainment experience that can't be matched at home, developers surmise, and the folks can be lured out of their secure houses--disposable income in hand--for a night out.